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Wilcoxson’s moving on from Facebook flap

Wilcoxson’s, the Livingston-based ice cream company whose president drew the fury of the Internet a few weeks ago over an insensitive comment on its Facebook page, has told its online fans that it’s done talking about the matter.

On the company’s restored Facebook page, it writes that while Wilcoxson’s has allowed discussion of the Sept. 21 commenting incident, the company is ready to move on.

In the spirit of civility, we feel the conversation has turned into a rant we can no longer support here. We want to thank the people that emailed us questions and those that made thoughtful comments here, even though they were negative. We deserved to be criticized. We let down our fans and customers, and for this we are truly sorry.

On Sept. 26, the Chronicle reported Wilcoxson’s president Matt Schaeffer, responding to a Wyoming Muslim’s question about whether the ice cream’s gelatin was kosher, had said:

“We don’t deliver outside of Montana, certainly not Pakistan.”

The comment provoked immediate angry responses from friends of the Wyoming man, and soon screenshots and news of the comment were posted to Reddit and other online news sources.

The response was so negative that Schaeffer decided to take the Facebook page down entirely.

People posted such nasty things on the Wilcoxson’s page that he deleted it and said, “It’s no longer going to be in existence.”

UPDATE FROM WILCOXSON’S: For several days, we have been hosting a discussion on Facebook about an incident that happened in September where our president made an insensitive comment to a customer online. Our president has apologized publicly and the company has apologized as well (please see our About section). In the spirit of civility, we feel the conversation has turned into a rant we can no longer support here. We want to thank the people that emailed us questions and those that made thoughtful comments here, even though they were negative. We deserved to be criticized. We let down our fans and customers, and for this we are truly sorry. You can continue to email us at [email protected] or message us here.

We feel that it is time to give our Facebook page back to our fans and friends. Be assured we read every comment you made and will take it to heart. We are in the midst of having discussions about how to change our customer service protocol so this doesn’t happen again. This incident does not reflect the true heart and culture of our company and we are saddened to think that people might think poorly of our company because of this one incident.

Unfortunately, for the sake of our community, we will delete comments and ban users who continue to violate the posting guidelines in our About section. We wish it wasn’t this way, but we feel the conversation has run its course. Thanks again to those who have supported us—we will work hard to regain your trust.

The above posting currently has 71 likes and 54 comments. Most of those comments are positive; considering the moderation policy outlined above (and in this comment from the company), that’s not surprising.

The page has 3,279 fans.

Update – A commenter notes that Wilcoxson’s mistyped their email address in the message I relayed here. Correct, it is wilcoxsonsinc@gmail.com.

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Michael Becker

Michael Becker is the Web Editor of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. He has been a blogger and professional journalist since 2005, covering subjects ranging from nonprofits and crime to engineering and technology.
View all posts by Michael Becker

9 thoughts on “Wilcoxson’s moving on from Facebook flap”

A couple things I noticed here, Sean, that might be worth mentioning. Wilcoxson’s is not done talking about the matter–they just aren’t going to host an open forum. They are still inviting anybody to message them or email them. Also, the email in the post is wrong. It was stated in a post in the comments. It is [email protected]. Typo there. Just wanted to clarify. I don’t know if saying they are done talking about it is really true.

A couple things I noticed, Sean. I’m not sure Wilcoxson’s said they are done talking about the matter. They said they didn’t want to host an open forum any longer and invited people to message or email them. A little different. They weren’t doing much talking on the page anyway. Also, the email in their status post is wrong–it was corrected a few comments down, it’s [email protected].